What to expect from medications?

[Anonymous]

After slowly getting worse over a period of time, my 5 moth old is now on Zantac and Gaviscon Infant. It seems to have improved him for most of the time but from 6pm till 9pm he still is very hard to keep asleep. He is still taking between 1 to 3 hours to finally stop waking every 20 to 55mins. Once past 9 pm he will go to sleep and not wake again till around 3-5 am and is very easy to resettle. Should/can the meds stop the reflux altogether or should we just live with 1-3 hours of settling every night?

[hellbennt]

welcome!

I have a lot to say, & the majority of it is here, so please click here: https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=853&am p;PN=1

the above link should address your questions

glad you found us!

[Anonymous]

hi there, zantac never helped my sons pain much.. have you asked about a PPI medication?
i would recommend reading over marci-kids.com it is a website dedicated to the latest research on infant reflux. they have PPI dosing information as well.

[Anonymous]

I think that if he is still waking because of reflux then you might need to consider moving on to a ppi. I think prilosec is losec where you are. Zantac only works for a certain amount of time where as ppi’s last longer.

[Anonymous]

Are you sure that the difficulty falling asleep is due to reflux and not due to general sleeping issues? If he is sleeping so well throughout the rest of the night, it makes me wonder if reflux is really the problem, or if he just has a hard time settling. Perhaps he is overtired and overstimulated, which can make bedtime a challenge until they settle into deep sleep. Or maybe his last nap is too close to his 6pm bedtime?

Does he show any other signs of reflux pain during the day? How does he feed? What about his nap time? If he seems fine for the most part but just has a hard time settling initially, then I would be inclined to think that it’s not reflux pain (but that’s just my thought).

Alternately, are you feeding him right before bedtime? If so, then maybe he is being bothered by the food, and once his stomach is empty he’s more comfortable. If that’s the case, can you try not to feed him so close to bedtime? Or what about elevating his mattress to make him more comfortable. You can also try to give a dose of mylanta before bed and see if that helps him at all. It’s OTC so you don’t have to worry about a doctor’s script.

Like you said, a PPI won’t stop the reflux, just help with the pain. If you think that pain is an issue then it might be worth a try. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your responses. He settles really well throughout the day now it is just the night session were he doesn’t settle well. (So we think the Zantac is working, for the moment.) We moved the night feed back an hour and that has shortened the fuss time to about an hour. He certainly is not gargling like he used to do, it may just be ingrained bad habits, which will take some time to fix. We are not oppossed to letting him CIO but a little wary as in the past he would just keep on crying and crying (before Zantac) Generally when he hasn’t got a poblem or once it has been solved he goes straight back to sleep. He is actually going down OK and appears to be asleep but then keeps waking every 20 mins. His cot is already elevated.

As an aside, I’ve noticed that here never seems to be a dads section on these webs sites.

[hellbennt]

in the 3yrs since I’vebeen here, there’s only been one ‘regular’ poster who was a dad and just one other short-term poster…

anyway, please read up on zantac and the other medications-

if your baby is fussy/uncomfortable due to reflux then I personally don’t think it’s a good idea to do any kind of sleep ‘training’

it sounds like perhaps your baby still has a (hopefully just a little bit) ways to go?

[Author]

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